SSR 1: Chapter 3: Of Machines and Markets by Maddison Grant

 

Secondary Source Report (Practice): Chapter 3: Of Machines and Markets

By Maddison Grant

Complete citation: Matthews, J. J. (2005). Dance hall and picture palace: Sydney’s romance with modernity. Currency Press.

Key Words: Modernity, Sydney, 20^th century, Machines, Reproducing machines, Entertainment, Film, Film industry, Motion pictures, Popular culture

Brief Overview:

Chapter 3 discusses the introduction and the spread of reproducing machines as entertainment in Australia, particularly that of cinema, during the beginning of the 20^th century.

Summary of key points:

• To become modern producing and reproducing machines needed to be put to work in modern ways, with modern purposes.
  
  
• At the turn of the 20^th century Sydney was a major port of call for a number of shipping circuits, and through ports like this travelers, showmen, salesman, and machinery came through.
   
• These showmen and salesman, who came from all directions, introduced and sold their wares across the country.
   
• By the turn of the century movie picture performances were showing periodically in dozens of venues throughout the country.
   
• By the 1920s reproducing machines were integrated into international show business, of which moving pictures were the most spectacular of these modern marvels.
   
• Cinema (moving pictures) was very much public entertainment while other reproducing machines, such as the gramophone and radio, became more private entertainment.
   
• Machines needed to continually evolve and become more sophisticated to keep audiences wonder and attention, particularly cinema.
   
• Cinema as modern entertainment needed to keep renewing itself to continue being successful and profitable, especially through respectability (resulting in government regulations and censorship).
   
•  Cinema (after it had been refined) needed to successfully market itself to hold audience’s attention and to, most importantly, keep them coming back.
   
• The ‘strategy if glamour’ through personification- the star, and the gratification of good works.

Important Quotations:

“They [machines] could change the way people perceived their world and understood it and themselves as modern.” (Matthews, 2005, p. 103)

“They [reproducing machines] were central in structuring the experience of modernity in everyday life, drawing ordinary people into a cosmopolitan community.” (p. 104)

“Beyond any specific product or machine, on sale in these early years was the wonder and marvel of the modern.” (p. 109)

“After the shock of the fact of reproduction wore off, the ever-changing content mattered more.” (p. 115)

“They [audiences] wanted to be entertained and enchanted. They wanted their knowledge of the world to be up-to-date. Neither the cinematograph as machine, nor any one or any series of moving pictures was enough to excite the continued renewal of desire.” (p. 116)

“Over the decade of the 1910s, as the marvel palled, the uncouth showmanship appalled, show business conducted its greatest transmutation. It turned the whole popular culture industry into a romance, a continually renewing story of the wonder of modernity.” (p. 118)

“The new science of selling became the epitome of modernity.” (p. 121)

“The great achievement of the film industry’s strategy of glamour was to create a constantly revivifying desire that grew by what it fed on.” (p. 127)

Usefulness to our group topic or individual project:

 Chapter 3: Of Machines and Markets would be useful to anyone interested in the introduction of reproducing machines, particularly cinema, in Australian contexts during the early 20^th century, and its transformation and ultimate acceptance.